Fitch Eyes MBIA-Guaranteed RMBS

Eighty-seven classes of residential mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by MBIA have been placed on Rating Watch Negative by Fitch Ratings. Fitch recently placed MBIA's triple-A insurer financial strength rating on Rating Watch Negative after an announcement that Fitch will be updating certain modeling assumptions in its analysis of the financial guaranty industry. "With the possibility that modeled losses for structured finance collateralized debt obligations may increase materially as a result of these updated projections, Fitch believes that loss projections will be most sensitive to loss given default assumptions used for SF CDOs that reference subprime RMBS collateral," the rating agency said. Fitch can be found on the Web at http://www.fitchratings.com.